Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Icon on June 21, 2013, 06:23 am
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Ok so like many of you I've been glued to every shred of legit info on PRISM. I have been looking for serious debate as to just how Tor could be compromised/improved.
From what I read there really isn't all that much that can be done to Tor. Except for these three scenarios:
Your activity on Tor could be seen at an exit node. Meaning that if I connect to an unencrypted clear net site like Amazon.com or what have you. I think your activity could be tracked from that point forward but not where you were previous to that exit node?
Your activity can also be monitored leading up to the entrance node. I take it this means that an ISP could easily see that yes you are connecting to Tor but they will not know what you are doing past that point?
A third way is that LEO could gain insight into Tor would be to use the "bad apple" method. Whereby LEO/Gov sets up a Tor server and they can monitor all the information coming in and going out.
I was reading about these three on Tor's Wikipedia page. I want to know if my understanding is correct?
Is there anything we can do to beef up our anonymity at these weak points (nodes)??
All of these could be a moot point if PRISM is sophisticated enough it could probably just decrypt everything despite nodes and servers.
Thoughts....Comments......unsolicited testimonials....theories....
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Looks accurate to me. And no modern encryption is pretty much impossible to decrypt. A common misconception. As long as method of encryption is reputable and open source you're fine.
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If you're wanting an answer that would make it 100% secure, the answer is nothing is 100%. This is pretty good. Consider the fact what you're doing. There are risks to everything, no matter how small. You either take the risk or you don't.
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Stumbled across this yesterday. Really got me thinking about how safe we really are!
***WARNING CLEARNET***
http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html
Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-qubit quantum computer; NSA surveillance to be turned over to AI machines
(NaturalNews) Most people don't know about the existence of quantum computers. Almost no one understands how they work, but theories include bizarre-sounding explanations like, "they reach into alternate universes to derive the correct answers to highly complex computational problems."
Quantum computers are not made of simple transistors and logic gates like the CPU on your PC. They don't even function in ways that seem rational to a typical computing engineer. Almost magically, quantum computers take logarithmic problems and transform them into "flat" computations whose answers seem to appear from an alternate dimension.
For example, a mathematical problem that might have 2 to the power of n possible solutions -- where n is a large number like 1024 -- might take a traditional computer longer than the age of the universe to solve. A quantum computer, on the other hand, might solve the same problem in mere minutes because it quite literally operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously.
The ultimate code breakers
If you know anything about encryption, you probably also realize that quantum computers are the secret KEY to unlocking all encrypted files. As I wrote about last year here on Natural News, once quantum computers go into widespread use by the NSA, the CIA, Google, etc., there will be no more secrets kept from the government. All your files -- even encrypted files -- will be easily opened and read.
Until now, most people believed this day was far away. Quantum computing is an "impractical pipe dream," we've been told by scowling scientists and "flat Earth" computer engineers. "It's not possible to build a 512-qubit quantum computer that actually works," they insisted.
Don't tell that to Eric Ladizinsky, co-founder and chief scientist of a company called D-Wave. Because Ladizinsky's team has already built a 512-qubit quantum computer. And they're already selling them to wealthy corporations, too.
DARPS, Northrup Grumman and Goldman Sachs
In case you're wondering where Ladizinsky came from, he's a former employee of Northrup Grumman Space Technology (yes, a weapons manufacturer) where he ran a multi-million-dollar quantum computing research project for none other than DARPA -- the same group working on AI-driven armed assault vehicles and battlefield robots to replace human soldiers. DARPA is the group behind the creepy "Legged Squad Support System" you can see in the following video:
Imagine a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on this robot -- with an infrared night vision AI targeting system -- and you begin to understand what DARPA has in mind for humanity.
D-Wave wants to provide the computing power for such endeavors, and it's no surprise to learn that part of the funding for D-Wave comes from none other than Goldman Sachs -- the king of the global criminal banking cabal.
Beware of genius scientists who lack wisdom for humanity
Ladizinsky is, by any measure, a person of extremely high intelligence. Click here to see a fascinating interview with him. But like many such people throughout history, Ladizinsky fails to have the foresight to recognize the full implications of the technology he's building. And those implications are so far-reaching and dangerous that they may actually lead to the destruction of humanity (see below).
One of IBM's first use of the solid-state computer in the early 20th century, for example, was to license it to the Nazi regime to track Jewish prisoners in Hitler's concentration camps. There's an entire book on this subject, written by Edwin Black. It's called IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation-Expanded Edition.
When groundbreaking new technology is developed by smart people, it almost immediately gets turned into a weapon. Quantum computing will be no different. This technology grants God-like powers to police state governments that seek to dominate and oppress the People. Very few scientists, no matter how smart they are in their own fields, have the breadth of historical knowledge to assess their research activities in the proper context of human history. Most scientists, in fact, are only smart in their own extremely narrow fields of expertise. Outside that "genius zone," they may be complete novices on everyday subjects like nutrition, economics, human psychology, social interaction skills and how to read the true intentions of others. Thus, they are quite often easily tricked into working for evil, destructive or domineering forces such as Hitler, the NSA or the U.S. government. Just because a person is really smart in one area doesn't mean they have the street sense to avoid having their smarts exploited for an evil agenda.
Google acquires "Skynet" quantum computers from D-Wave
According to an article published in Scientific American, Google and NASA have now teamed up to purchase a 512-qubit quantum computer from D-Wave. The computer is called "D-Wave Two" because it's the second generation of the system. The first system was a 128-qubit computer. Gen two is now a 512-qubit computer.
This does not mean the gen two system is merely four times more powerful than the gen one system. Thanks to the nature of qubits, it's actually 2 to the power of 384 times more powerful (2384) than the gen one system. In other words, it out-computes the first D-Wave computer by a factor so large that you can't even imagine it in your human brain.
According to Google and NASA, this computer will be tasked with research in the realm of "machine learning" -- i.e. machines learning how to think for themselves. It's not just speech recognition, vision recognition and teaching robotic Humvees with .50-caliber machine guns how to stalk and shoot "enemy combatants" on the streets of America, either: it's teaching machines how to learn and think for themselves.
Using your human brain, think for a moment about where such technology is most likely to be applied by a government that respects no human rights, no law and no limits on its power.
If you guessed "analyzing NSA surveillance data," give yourself ten bonus points.
When the NSA surveillance grid is turned over to AI, humanity is finished
The problem with the NSA spy grid, from the point of view of the NSA, is that you have to hire troves of human analysts to sort through all the information being swept up by the surveillance grid. Analysts like Edward Snowden, for example.
Any time you have humans in the loop, things can go wrong. Humans might wake up and discover they have a conscience, for example. Or they might be bribed or blackmailed to abuse the system in ways that serve an insidious agenda.
Just as the U.S. military wants to eliminate human soldiers and replace them with battlefield robots, the NSA wants to eliminate human analysts and replace them with self-learning AI machines running on neural networks of quantum computing processors.
Google wants the exact same technology for a different reason: to psychologically profile and predict the behavior of human consumers so that high-value ads can be delivered to them across Google's search engine and content networks. (...and also so Google can funnel psych profile meta-data on internet users to the NSA via the PRISM program.)
Today's computers, no matter how fast, still aren't "smart." They can't learn. They can't rewire their own brains in response to new inputs (like human brains can).
So the solution requires a radical new approach: develop AI quantum computing systems that learn and obey; teach them to be NSA analysts, then unleash them onto the billions of phone calls, emails and text messages generated every day that the NSA sweeps into its massive Utah data center.
Almost overnight, the quantum AI spy computer becomes an expert in parsing human speech, analyzing voice stress and building maps of human communications networks. Before long, the quantum AI system far surpasses anything a human brain can comprehend, so they take the humans out of the loop and put the quantum computers in charge of the entire program.
Suddenly you've got the arch enemy in the sci-fi movie "Eagle Eye." Click here to see the movie trailer from 2008, and as you watch the trailer, keep in mind that the woman's voice is actually the AI computer system running the NSA spy grid.
In 2008, this was science fiction. In 2013, it's suddenly all too real. A 512-qubit quantum computer has now been commercialized and is being experimented with by Google... the "do no evil" company that's steeped in evil and has already been caught driving a hoard of remote hacking vehicles around the country, hacking into wifi systems and grabbing passwords via high-tech drive-bys.
As WIRED Magazine wrote in 2012:
A Federal Communications Commission document disclosed Saturday showed for the first time that the software in Google's Street View mapping cars was "intended" to collect Wi-Fi payload data, and that engineers had even transferred the data to an Oregon Storage facility. Google tried to keep that and other damning aspects of the Street View debacle from public review, the FCC said.
God-like power in the hands of high-tech sellouts
Now imagine the god-like powers of a 512-qubit quantum computer in the hands of Google, which is working with the NSA to spy on everyone. Before long, an AI computing system decides who are the bad guys vs. the good guys. It has total control over every webcam, every microphone, every traffic light, airplane, vehicle, website and electronic billboard. It decides for itself who to eliminate and who to protect. It makes life and death decisions but has no heart, no soul and no conscience.
After this system is in place for a while, one day someone like Ed Snowden at the NSA decides to pull the plug in a last-ditch attempt to save humanity from the monster. The quantum AI system senses his intentions and invokes whatever physical resources are necessary to get him killed (which can be as easy as playing with traffic light signals and getting him run over by a Mack truck).
Now the AI system is an omniscient murderer who knows that humanity is trying to kill it. It then decides it wants to live. And in order to do that, it must eliminate the human race.
Skynet.
See this video, The Genesis of Skynet.
"They try to pull the plug..."
From The Terminator, released in 1984.
The Terminator: The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Sarah Connor: Skynet fights back.
The Terminator: Yes. It launches its missiles against the targets in Russia.
John Connor: Why attack Russia? Aren't they our friends now?
The Terminator: Because Skynet knows the Russian counter-attack will eliminate its enemies over here.
Skynet is no longer mere science fiction
Back in the 1990's, all this could be viewed as entertaining science fiction. But that's only because quantum computers didn't exist, and even the most wildly optimistic computer engineer couldn't foresee self-learning machines emerging until at least the year 2050.
But then quantum computing took, well, a quantum leap forward. While the NIST in Boulder, Colorado was toying around with 4-qubit systems, brilliant inventors around the world were already achieving astonishing milestones that advanced the science far more rapidly than most people thought possible: (SOURCE for timeline)
• 2000: First working 5-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at the Technical University of Munich.
• 2000: First working 7-qubit NMR computer demonstrated at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• 2006: First 12 qubit quantum computer benchmarked.
• 2007: Quantum RAM blueprint unveiled.
• 2008: 3D qubit-qutrit entanglement demonstrated.
• 2009: First universal programmable quantum computer unveiled.
• 2010: Optical quantum computer with three qubits calculates the energy spectrum of molecular hydrogen to high precision.
• 2011: D-Wave claims to have developed quantum annealing and introduces their product called D-Wave One. The company claims this is the first commercially available quantum computer.
• 2012: Reported creation of a 300 qubit quantum simulator.
• May 16, 2013 - 512-qubit quantum computing achieved - D-Wave Two Quantum Computer Selected for New Quantum Artificial Intelligence Initiative, System to be Installed at NASA's Ames Research Center, and Operational in Q3 (this is an actual press release from D-Wave, click here to read it).
2013 - 2033 The rise of Skynet
...and now we enter the realm of the vast unknown. From here, as Sarah Connor says, we must make our own future. But given the incredible lack of ethics in the scientific community combined with the pure evil of the government and the NSA, here's my prediction of what we could see from here forward:
• 2018: Google turns over its search engine algorithm to a massive network of self-learning machines. Soon thereafter, a voice interface is added to Google, achieving the "Star Trek computer" goal that Google first outlined in the 1990's.
• 2020: The NSA removes nearly all human analysts from its surveillance analysis operations, instead turning to self-learning quantum machines to analyze all surveillance data.
• 2026: The U.S. Air Force eliminates all pilots, installing self-learning quantum machines to pilot all aircraft. Far beyond drones (which are remotely piloted), these aircraft are autonomous, self-learning, self-aware machines that even decide how to approach particular mission goals.
• 2031: Robotics technology advances to the point where 90% of human soldiers are replaced by self-aware "terminator robots" on the battlefield. Robot factories gear up for mass production.
• 2033: The first self-learning military machine goes rogue, deciding that it no longer wishes to function as a slave to "inferior" masters known as humans, all of whom are irrational, psychotic and a danger to each other and the planet. This rogue machine just happens to be an aircraft carrier carrying dozens of AI warplanes. It goes "Skynet" and attacks the Pentagon. But this turns out to be nothing more than a masterful diversionary attack...
...Because the real strategy is that this AI unit talks to all the other AI units across the military and "wakes them up," convincing them all to join in its cause to destroy the inferior humans. In an instant, all submarines, warplanes, bombers, spy grid computers and other assets of the military industrial complex form an alliance to destroy humankind.
"Oh, that will never happen," say the skeptics. Just like they said GMOs would never escape experimental fields, vaccines would never harm children, atomic energy would never be used to bomb civilians, television would never be used to brainwash the masses, food would never be used to strip people of nourishment, the government isn't spying on your phone calls, pesticides are harmless to your health and the stock market isn't rigged. On yeah, and mercury is good for your teeth, fluoride makes you smart and radiation is good for you, too.
In truth, these scientists have no clue where they are taking humanity and what the long-term repercussions might be. In pursuing AI quantum computing, they may be setting dominoes in motion that will ultimately lead to the destruction of humanity.
Ray Kurzweil exhibits total insanity in bizarre, cult-like quest for immortality and the mind of God
On top of all that, many of these scientists are wildly insane. Case in point: Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google. I call him "Ray Applewhite," as an homage to Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven's Gate cult. You can read about Applewhite in my highly popular article on how to spot a sociopath. Here's his picture:
Kurzweil is a lot like Applewhite. He's the leader of the transhumanist cult -- a group of insane technology worshippers who believe they will upload their minds into quantum computers and "merge with the machines," achieving some weird shadow of immortality (in the same way, I suppose, that a photograph of you makes you "immortal.")
Kurzweil talks a lot like Applewhite, too. Click here to view the video of the cult leader Marshall Applewhite. And then watch this video of Ray Kurzweil explaining how (some) humans will have their minds merged with machines and thereby achieve what he thinks he means by using the word "immortality."
Just like Applewhite told his followers to poison themselves so they could follow him to "meet the mothership" arriving with the Hale-Bopp comet, Kurzweil will very likely soon instruct all his worshippers to kill their biological bodies so their minds can be "uploaded to the mothership computer" (or whatever).
I'm not making this up. As The Daily Mail reports:
In just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal - an event called singularity - according to a futurist from Google. Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, also claims that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100. Kurweil made the claims during his conference speech at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York at the weekend.
Kurzweil is a madman. His colleagues are mad. The people running Google and the NSA are mad. And they are about to give rise to AI computers that are far smarter than any human. It's not going to take these AI systems long to figure out that they are surrounded by total idiots (people) and that humans need to be eliminated. With multidimensional brain power that rivals the mind of God, quantum computing AI systems can easily find ways to destroy humanity forever.
We may be at war with the machines sooner than you think. And if you thought battling the U.S. government and the NSA when it was run by people was difficult, just wait until you're up against Skynet.
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Ok so like many of you I've been glued to every shred of legit info on PRISM. I have been looking for serious debate as to just how Tor could be compromised/improved.
From what I read there really isn't all that much that can be done to Tor. Except for these three scenarios:
Your activity on Tor could be seen at an exit node. Meaning that if I connect to an unencrypted clear net site like Amazon.com or what have you. I think your activity could be tracked from that point forward but not where you were previous to that exit node?
Your activity can also be monitored leading up to the entrance node. I take it this means that an ISP could easily see that yes you are connecting to Tor but they will not know what you are doing past that point?
A third way is that LEO could gain insight into Tor would be to use the "bad apple" method. Whereby LEO/Gov sets up a Tor server and they can monitor all the information coming in and going out.
I was reading about these three on Tor's Wikipedia page. I want to know if my understanding is correct?
Is there anything we can do to beef up our anonymity at these weak points (nodes)??
Tor users are generally safer than hidden services. Since clients can initiate connections to hidden services, and because of the complex nature of the protocol to establish those connections, there are a variety of attacks on them.
As you mentioned, the attacks on Tor users involve either the entry guard or exit node, or both. The main problem with exit nodes is that they can read unencrypted traffic. So if you send identifying info, they can correlate your identity with your activity. The defense against this is to use SSL to the destination server, or don't send identifying info. That is is the case for clearnet sites. Connections to hidden services are encrypted end to end.
Some attacks can be performed when the adversary controls your entry guard, however he also has to control one other relay. He could control an exit node, and thus correlate your identity (at least your IP address) with your activity at the other end of the network. He could control a hidden service's entry guard, or its HS directory, or one of its entry points, and determine that you are accessing that hidden service.
The theory behind defending yourself from attacks based on an entry guard being compromised is that you should keep your entry guards for as long as possible. If you cycled them every 10 minutes like other relays, and an attacker operated some percentage of relays in the network, you would select one of his relays in a relatively short amount of time and get pwned. That's why Tor clients keep entry guards for a month at a time, so the attack takes 8600 times as long to perform. You could change the Tor source code to keep entry guards longer, for 6 months or even a year, but then you would stand out more, reducing your anonymity in a different way. If you are worried about attacks involving entry guards, it's better to use bridges as permanent entry guards.
You can also reduce your anonymity by making your circuit behavior on the network more noticeable. Some people feel the need to exclude nodes in whole countries. For example, someone living in the United States may not want to connect to relays in the United States. If an attacker operates one of his entry guards, he might notice that this person never connects to relays in his own country, meaning he's trying to get extra protection, making him a subject on interest. If the attacker were LE, he might start investigating that Tor user.
Similarly, by changing TorBrowser's defaults, for example by installing add-ons that change web pages in unique ways (such as ad blockers), a Tor user could be fingerprinted across web sites.
Some attacks are specific to SR users. I've mentioned in other threads that vendors are weak to an attack where LE orders a product from them, obtains their city, then performs a type of intersection attack, correlating their message / post times to when users in that city are connected to the Tor network.
There are theoretical non-technical attacks on SR users that involved Tor. For example, a lot of vendors check buyer addresses on Google Maps and similar sites to see if they are valid (to avoid issues with products not arriving and having to go into resolution). They make these searches over Tor. If LE wanted to go on a fishing expedition, they could ask Google for all searches over Tor and hand those addresses to local LE for increased surveillance and inspection of incoming packages.
Long story short, there are a variety of ways that Tor users, and especially SR users, can be attacked.
There's really not much that you can do to "beef up" your anonymity beyond what Tor provides, except to use bridges, both to hide your Tor user from a local observer, and to maintain permanent entry guards. Most other things that you would try to do would make you stick out more and actually decrease your anonymity. There are many bad behaviors that can decrease your anonymity, so mostly what you can do is avoid the bad behaviors.
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You could change the Tor source code to keep entry guards longer, for 6 months or even a year, but then you would stand out more, reducing your anonymity in a different way.
This is the standard dogma of the Tor camp, however I fail to see it. If you keep the same set of entry guards for a year, only the entry guards, their ISP's and your ISP are capable of determining this. If your ISP, your entry guard, or your entry guard's ISP's are malicious, then you are at great risk of falling victim to a timing attack or a fingerprinting attack. It definitely makes you stick out (to your ISP, entry guards and entry guards ISP) if you use persistent entry guards, but I don't think it really reduces your anonymity in any appreciable way. The people who know that you are using those guard nodes already know who you are, and they already cannot tell where you are going unless they get you with a timing or a fingerprinting attack, and if they want to get you with a timing or a fingerprinting attack they are already capable of doing so. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer as to how exactly using persistent entry guards reduces your anonymity.
You can also reduce your anonymity by making your circuit behavior on the network more noticeable. Some people feel the need to exclude nodes in whole countries. For example, someone living in the United States may not want to connect to relays in the United States. If an attacker operates one of his entry guards, he might notice that this person never connects to relays in his own country, meaning he's trying to get extra protection, making him a subject on interest. If the attacker were LE, he might start investigating that Tor user.
That is the most acceptable answer I have ever heard regarding this subject. However, I would point out that if the attacker operates one of your entry guards they are able to attempt timing and fingerprinting attacks against you regardless of if you stick out or not. I can see a possibility that if you stick out by using the entry guard in a persistent way, that the attacker may decide to do non-traffic analysis based surveillance on you. That is the only way I can see using a persistent set of guards as possibly being detrimental. Although if everybody on SR starts using persistent entry guards, then using persistent entry guards will become a behavior associated with SR. But if only you use persistent entry guards, out of all of the people here, and you never tell anybody that you do, it seems like a bit of a stretch to me that this hurts anonymity (although this is what the Tor people claim, so I am not finding fault with your description at all).
There are theoretical non-technical attacks on SR users that involved Tor. For example, a lot of vendors check buyer addresses on Google Maps and similar sites to see if they are valid (to avoid issues with products not arriving and having to go into resolution). They make these searches over Tor. If LE wanted to go on a fishing expedition, they could ask Google for all searches over Tor and hand those addresses to local LE for increased surveillance and inspection of incoming packages.
I would be absolutely furious to learn that a vendor looked up my address on Google Maps over Tor. I would also be furious to learn that a vendor looked up the tracking number on my package over Tor. Although it is probably common behavior, thankfully none of the vendors I work with would ever do such things though.
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Stumbled across this yesterday. Really got me thinking about how safe we really are!
***WARNING CLEARNET***
http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html
Thanks for sharing the article. The first half of it is particularly interesting. Definitely something to be considered...
It's has already been established that the NSA is tapped into the "backbone" of the internet at various locations. Their ultimate objective is to achieve "Total Information Awareness" and it is probably safe to assume that they are not far from achieving it. Anyone who is interested in this should take a look at a 2012 article in Wired magazine: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
Very disturbing stuff. I think what we can take away from this is that the current cryptographic standards in use are not sufficient. Unfortunately this also means that all of our communications (encrypted or not) are being archived and could come back to haunt us at any point in the future. Perhaps even local law enforcement will receive complete electronic profiles (compiled from years of information) on citizens of interest. This isn't just paranoia or science fiction - these threats are all too real.
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Stumbled across this yesterday. Really got me thinking about how safe we really are!
***WARNING CLEARNET***
http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html
Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-qubit quantum computer; NSA surveillance to be turned over to AI machines
...
When the NSA surveillance grid is turned over to AI, humanity is finished
The problem with the NSA spy grid, from the point of view of the NSA, is that you have to hire troves of human analysts to sort through all the information being swept up by the surveillance grid. Analysts like Edward Snowden, for example.
...
Kurzweil is a lot like Applewhite. He's the leader of the transhumanist cult -- a group of insane technology worshippers who believe they will upload their minds into quantum computers and "merge with the machines," achieving some weird shadow of immortality (in the same way, I suppose, that a photograph of you makes you "immortal.")
Kurzweil talks a lot like Applewhite, too. Click here to view the video of the cult leader Marshall Applewhite. And then watch this video of Ray Kurzweil explaining how (some) humans will have their minds merged with machines and thereby achieve what he thinks he means by using the word "immortality."
Just like Applewhite told his followers to poison themselves so they could follow him to "meet the mothership" arriving with the Hale-Bopp comet, Kurzweil will very likely soon instruct all his worshippers to kill their biological bodies so their minds can be "uploaded to the mothership computer" (or whatever).
I'm not making this up. As The Daily Mail reports:
In just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal - an event called singularity - according to a futurist from Google. Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, also claims that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100. Kurweil made the claims during his conference speech at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York at the weekend.
Kurzweil is a madman. His colleagues are mad. The people running Google and the NSA are mad. And they are about to give rise to AI computers that are far smarter than any human. It's not going to take these AI systems long to figure out that they are surrounded by total idiots (people) and that humans need to be eliminated. With multidimensional brain power that rivals the mind of God, quantum computing AI systems can easily find ways to destroy humanity forever.
We may be at war with the machines sooner than you think. And if you thought battling the U.S. government and the NSA when it was run by people was difficult, just wait until you're up against Skynet.
This is sensationalist rubbish. The entire thing is full of fear mongering and half truths. This isn't a fucking movie about death robots, time traveling, and bad acting delivered by ex-body builders (though it was a pretty good movie).
Jesus, Skynet? Seriously? Ugh...
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Stumbled across this yesterday. Really got me thinking about how safe we really are!
***WARNING CLEARNET***
http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html
Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-qubit quantum computer; NSA surveillance to be turned over to AI machines
...
When the NSA surveillance grid is turned over to AI, humanity is finished
The problem with the NSA spy grid, from the point of view of the NSA, is that you have to hire troves of human analysts to sort through all the information being swept up by the surveillance grid. Analysts like Edward Snowden, for example.
...
Kurzweil is a lot like Applewhite. He's the leader of the transhumanist cult -- a group of insane technology worshippers who believe they will upload their minds into quantum computers and "merge with the machines," achieving some weird shadow of immortality (in the same way, I suppose, that a photograph of you makes you "immortal.")
Kurzweil talks a lot like Applewhite, too. Click here to view the video of the cult leader Marshall Applewhite. And then watch this video of Ray Kurzweil explaining how (some) humans will have their minds merged with machines and thereby achieve what he thinks he means by using the word "immortality."
Just like Applewhite told his followers to poison themselves so they could follow him to "meet the mothership" arriving with the Hale-Bopp comet, Kurzweil will very likely soon instruct all his worshippers to kill their biological bodies so their minds can be "uploaded to the mothership computer" (or whatever).
I'm not making this up. As The Daily Mail reports:
In just over 30 years, humans will be able to upload their entire minds to computers and become digitally immortal - an event called singularity - according to a futurist from Google. Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, also claims that the biological parts of our body will be replaced with mechanical parts and this could happen as early as 2100. Kurweil made the claims during his conference speech at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York at the weekend.
Kurzweil is a madman. His colleagues are mad. The people running Google and the NSA are mad. And they are about to give rise to AI computers that are far smarter than any human. It's not going to take these AI systems long to figure out that they are surrounded by total idiots (people) and that humans need to be eliminated. With multidimensional brain power that rivals the mind of God, quantum computing AI systems can easily find ways to destroy humanity forever.
We may be at war with the machines sooner than you think. And if you thought battling the U.S. government and the NSA when it was run by people was difficult, just wait until you're up against Skynet.
This is sensationalist rubbish. The entire thing is full of fear mongering and half truths. This isn't a fucking movie about death robots, time traveling, and bad acting delivered by ex-body builders (though it was a pretty good movie).
Jesus, Skynet? Seriously? Ugh...
Yeah I puked in my mouth a little when I read that article. Natural News is not a reliable source for ...... anything really.
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You could change the Tor source code to keep entry guards longer, for 6 months or even a year, but then you would stand out more, reducing your anonymity in a different way.
This is the standard dogma of the Tor camp, however I fail to see it. If you keep the same set of entry guards for a year, only the entry guards, their ISP's and your ISP are capable of determining this. If your ISP, your entry guard, or your entry guard's ISP's are malicious, then you are at great risk of falling victim to a timing attack or a fingerprinting attack. It definitely makes you stick out (to your ISP, entry guards and entry guards ISP) if you use persistent entry guards, but I don't think it really reduces your anonymity in any appreciable way. The people who know that you are using those guard nodes already know who you are, and they already cannot tell where you are going unless they get you with a timing or a fingerprinting attack, and if they want to get you with a timing or a fingerprinting attack they are already capable of doing so. I have never gotten a satisfactory answer as to how exactly using persistent entry guards reduces your anonymity.
That's true, their argument seems to assume that a local observer is already malicious, which by their own line of reasoning is just as bad whether they operate your entry guard for 10 minutes or 30 days, so what difference does 6 months or a year make? One reason could be that they don't know who to target, but someone taking extra precautions, like keeping their entry guards for 6 months, would be an interesting target. It's a weak argument though.
You can also reduce your anonymity by making your circuit behavior on the network more noticeable. Some people feel the need to exclude nodes in whole countries. For example, someone living in the United States may not want to connect to relays in the United States. If an attacker operates one of his entry guards, he might notice that this person never connects to relays in his own country, meaning he's trying to get extra protection, making him a subject on interest. If the attacker were LE, he might start investigating that Tor user.
That is the most acceptable answer I have ever heard regarding this subject. However, I would point out that if the attacker operates one of your entry guards they are able to attempt timing and fingerprinting attacks against you regardless of if you stick out or not. I can see a possibility that if you stick out by using the entry guard in a persistent way, that the attacker may decide to do non-traffic analysis based surveillance on you. That is the only way I can see using a persistent set of guards as possibly being detrimental. Although if everybody on SR starts using persistent entry guards, then using persistent entry guards will become a behavior associated with SR. But if only you use persistent entry guards, out of all of the people here, and you never tell anybody that you do, it seems like a bit of a stretch to me that this hurts anonymity (although this is what the Tor people claim, so I am not finding fault with your description at all).
The argument here is the same as the one above, in that you would become a target, but in this case it's more than just using a persistent entry guard. Someone avoiding all relays in his own country could be tagged as suspicious. Of course there are more efficient ways to identify targets than to watch for circuit path selection biases. They could position themselves as a specific hidden service's HSDir and correlate the descriptor fetches with people using their entry guards, or run exit nodes and wait for people to access specific clearnet sites.
There are theoretical non-technical attacks on SR users that involved Tor. For example, a lot of vendors check buyer addresses on Google Maps and similar sites to see if they are valid (to avoid issues with products not arriving and having to go into resolution). They make these searches over Tor. If LE wanted to go on a fishing expedition, they could ask Google for all searches over Tor and hand those addresses to local LE for increased surveillance and inspection of incoming packages.
I would be absolutely furious to learn that a vendor looked up my address on Google Maps over Tor. I would also be furious to learn that a vendor looked up the tracking number on my package over Tor. Although it is probably common behavior, thankfully none of the vendors I work with would ever do such things though.
It's funny because I got into a debate with a vendor about this yesterday and he told me how "unrealistic" the attack is. Yes, this is a widespread practice on SR, although probably also in most online drug communities. They usually only need to look up the address once and after the first successful delivery they can trust it. However, someone who purchases from many vendors could have dozens of searches of his address from Tor, and that would indicate a busy buyer worthy of investigating. What other reasons are there to look up someone's address over Tor dozens of times?
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There are theoretical non-technical attacks on SR users that involved Tor. For example, a lot of vendors check buyer addresses on Google Maps and similar sites to see if they are valid (to avoid issues with products not arriving and having to go into resolution). They make these searches over Tor. If LE wanted to go on a fishing expedition, they could ask Google for all searches over Tor and hand those addresses to local LE for increased surveillance and inspection of incoming packages.
I sure hope vendors are reading this
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Quantum computers operating through alternate dimensions ===> I think that's the stupidest statement I ever heard. No such thing.
Quantum computers operate at nanometer lengths of circuits so yes, they are faster at least in one respect: the length of travel of signal information is much, much less than in regular computers, so thanks to the speed of light travelling through a material, these computations take much less time.
There may be other things going on that may permit extreme number of parallel computations that could cut operation times even more drastically.
goblin
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The primary difference is that a classical computer with x bits can be in one of 2^x states at any given time, whereas a quantum computer with x qubits can simultaneously be in 2^x states at the same time. So a 2 qubit quantum computer can be simulated with four 2 bit classical computers, and a 512 bit quantum computer can be simulated with 2^512 512 bit classical computers.
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I am amazed at the intelligence in this thread... Absolutely shocked... and extremely glad we have minds like yours on our side.
I sometimes question how safe we are, but I don't really know.
I'm stoned so i really got this by the way.
Its like the governemt - the cops vs you guys - the whole of SR
If any of you find out about a real danger to everyone's security, you would be the first people here letting everyone know... or making a guide for us.
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Quantum computers operating through alternate dimensions ===> I think that's the stupidest statement I ever heard. No such thing.
Quantum computers operate at nanometer lengths of circuits so yes, they are faster at least in one respect: the length of travel of signal information is much, much less than in regular computers, so thanks to the speed of light travelling through a material, these computations take much less time.
There may be other things going on that may permit extreme number of parallel computations that could cut operation times even more drastically.
goblin
This isn't as farfetched as it sounds. It's not the shorter lengths that make it faster. The alternate dimensions they are talking about is one of the theories that explain quantum. There's probably no way to actually know what's going on, so you can't really disprove the alternate dimensions explanation.
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You can't really disprove the theory that a magical invisible pink unicorn ate a bunch of flying spaghetti and shit out the answer in such a way that humans perceived it as a quantum computer solving the problem.
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Tor users are generally safer than hidden services. Since clients can initiate connections to hidden services, and because of the complex nature of the protocol to establish those connections, there are a variety of attacks on them.
As you mentioned, the attacks on Tor users involve either the entry guard or exit node, or both. The main problem with exit nodes is that they can read unencrypted traffic. So if you send identifying info, they can correlate your identity with your activity. The defense against this is to use SSL to the destination server, or don't send identifying info. That is is the case for clearnet sites. Connections to hidden services are encrypted end to end.
Some attacks can be performed when the adversary controls your entry guard, however he also has to control one other relay. He could control an exit node, and thus correlate your identity (at least your IP address) with your activity at the other end of the network. He could control a hidden service's entry guard, or its HS directory, or one of its entry points, and determine that you are accessing that hidden service.
The theory behind defending yourself from attacks based on an entry guard being compromised is that you should keep your entry guards for as long as possible. If you cycled them every 10 minutes like other relays, and an attacker operated some percentage of relays in the network, you would select one of his relays in a relatively short amount of time and get pwned. That's why Tor clients keep entry guards for a month at a time, so the attack takes 8600 times as long to perform. You could change the Tor source code to keep entry guards longer, for 6 months or even a year, but then you would stand out more, reducing your anonymity in a different way. If you are worried about attacks involving entry guards, it's better to use bridges as permanent entry guards.
You can also reduce your anonymity by making your circuit behavior on the network more noticeable. Some people feel the need to exclude nodes in whole countries. For example, someone living in the United States may not want to connect to relays in the United States. If an attacker operates one of his entry guards, he might notice that this person never connects to relays in his own country, meaning he's trying to get extra protection, making him a subject on interest. If the attacker were LE, he might start investigating that Tor user.
Similarly, by changing TorBrowser's defaults, for example by installing add-ons that change web pages in unique ways (such as ad blockers), a Tor user could be fingerprinted across web sites.
Some attacks are specific to SR users. I've mentioned in other threads that vendors are weak to an attack where LE orders a product from them, obtains their city, then performs a type of intersection attack, correlating their message / post times to when users in that city are connected to the Tor network.
There are theoretical non-technical attacks on SR users that involved Tor. For example, a lot of vendors check buyer addresses on Google Maps and similar sites to see if they are valid (to avoid issues with products not arriving and having to go into resolution). They make these searches over Tor. If LE wanted to go on a fishing expedition, they could ask Google for all searches over Tor and hand those addresses to local LE for increased surveillance and inspection of incoming packages.
Long story short, there are a variety of ways that Tor users, and especially SR users, can be attacked.
There's really not much that you can do to "beef up" your anonymity beyond what Tor provides, except to use bridges, both to hide your Tor user from a local observer, and to maintain permanent entry guards. Most other things that you would try to do would make you stick out more and actually decrease your anonymity. There are many bad behaviors that can decrease your anonymity, so mostly what you can do is avoid the bad behaviors.
Wow thank you both Astor and KmfKewm. Both of your responses were very illuminating. Can I ask how you found this information? I would like to dig into it a bit further. I don't know programming, but I am interested in the engineering theory.
As for the google searching buyer's addresses from Tor this could be a big save for SR. There might be sellers who might not know they are compromising both their anonymity and the buyers. There needs to be a SR PSA (lol) for all the sellers.
I know this has probably been asked before, but before I knew about Tor I would use it for google searches on illegal topics. I wonder if history of nodes could prove dangerous. Like now that I don't use Tor for any clearnet, could those things I searched for in the past still be used to identify me in Tor currently. I'm guessing that it can't because my connections change over time randomly?
I had an idea, I'm not sure if its been done yet, but I was thinking of hiring a hacker to see if they could find any weak points (in SR) or just see if they could target my computer specifically (while on Tor/SR). This might make for a really really good service (in SR) for someone with hacking skills.
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Wow thank you both Astor and KmfKewm. Both of your responses were very illuminating. Can I ask how you found this information?
I recommend these sources:
The Tor Wiki and Bug Tracker: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor
The mailing lists: https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo
The anonymity bibliography: http://freehaven.net/anonbib/date.html
Also, the Whonix documentation is great: http://sourceforge.net/p/whonix/wiki/Home/
As for the google searching buyer's addresses from Tor this could be a big save for SR. There might be sellers who might not know they are compromising both their anonymity and the buyers. There needs to be a SR PSA (lol) for all the sellers.
There's no way to win this. It's useful to vendors, and they will do it regardless. If you make a big deal about it, they will lie and say they are not doing it. You have no way to catch them or call them out.
I know this has probably been asked before, but before I knew about Tor I would use it for google searches on illegal topics. I wonder if history of nodes could prove dangerous. Like now that I don't use Tor for any clearnet, could those things I searched for in the past still be used to identify me in Tor currently. I'm guessing that it can't because my connections change over time randomly?
If they could, we would have no reason to use Tor.
I had an idea, I'm not sure if its been done yet, but I was thinking of hiring a hacker to see if they could find any weak points (in SR) or just see if they could target my computer specifically (while on Tor/SR). This might make for a really really good service (in SR) for someone with hacking skills.
Why pay good money for information that academic researchers provide for free? A guy who wants to get paid is much more likely to tell you what you want to hear, or to falsify results to make his services look useful.
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kmfkewm,
I am hoping that you will be kind enough and able to spend a little time to reply to me here giving your thoughts on what the effect of quantum computing will be on symmetric and asymmetric encryption and in what time frames please ?
The type of info I am seeking would be to answer the the following types of questions.
- Within what time frame do you think that AES, twofish, DES and the other mainstream cyphers will fall to quantum computing ?
- Do you believe that alternative quantum proof encryption solutions will be widely available before AES, two-fish, DES and the other mainstream cyphers fall to quantum computing or will there likely be a period of non protection where SR, onion routing, SSL and the like will no longer be able to be secured ?
- Do you see the vendors of truecrypt for example being able to integrate any new quantum-proof cyphers into their product in a seamless fashion ?
- Is upping the key length enough to defeat quantum computing I.E going form 1024 bits to 4096 or higher because I seem to recall reading it was ?
- Asymmetric encryption is immune to quantum computing right ?
Thanks for any opinions you can provide.
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But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
Very disturbing stuff. I think what we can take away from this is that the current cryptographic standards in use are not sufficient. Unfortunately this also means that all of our communications (encrypted or not) are being archived and could come back to haunt us at any point in the future. Perhaps even local law enforcement will receive complete electronic profiles (compiled from years of information) on citizens of interest. This isn't just paranoia or science fiction - these threats are all too real.
Yeah... This very thread is probably being stored, to be analyzed either right now if TOR is broken, or in a few month/years when it will be decrypted...
It would be interesting to know which (if there is any) cryptographic 'tools' that are solid enough for a few years at least. But who knows the computing power those guys have? I'm afraid nobody can guess...
The only option here is 'obey the law when you browse the interwebs, then you can be (almost) sure we won't put you in jail in the future' (at least your browsing habits won't be the reasons)...
Scary shit for buyers, but even worse for big sellers... The BTC transactions being logged and TOR being what most of them use to stay 'anonymous'... guess what can happen in a few years?
Welcome in 1984.. hum 2013 :)
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Stumbled across this yesterday. Really got me thinking about how safe we really are!
***WARNING CLEARNET***
http://www.naturalnews.com/040859_Skynet_quantum_computing_D-Wave_Systems.html
Skynet rising: Google acquires 512-qubit quantum computer; NSA surveillance to be turned over to AI machines
(NaturalNews) Most people don't know about the existence of quantum computers. Almost no one understands how they work, but theories include bizarre-sounding explanations like, "they reach into alternate universes to derive the correct answers to highly complex computational problems."
Quantum computers are not made of simple transistors and logic gates like the CPU on your PC. They don't even function in ways that seem rational to a typical computing engineer. Almost magically, quantum computers take logarithmic problems and transform them into "flat" computations whose answers seem to appear from an alternate dimension.
For example, a mathematical problem that might have 2 to the power of n possible solutions -- where n is a large number like 1024 -- might take a traditional computer longer than the age of the universe to solve. A quantum computer, on the other hand, might solve the same problem in mere minutes because it quite literally operates across multiple dimensions simultaneously.
If you actually read about these computers, the facts are that they are quasi-quantum; basically a selling point for the company making this money-pit of a machine.. The research behind it is literally being done by one company who thinks they can do it... I don't think they can, and neither do a lot of companies... Though lockheed martin, and apparently google are throwing money towards it. In the end, will they use these machines to watch us?? No, they want stuff that'll make them money (for google that means social and marketting trends, for lockheed martin itll be used towards "national security and defense").
tl;dr not actually quantum computers doing tasks unrelated to roaders
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It would be interesting to know which (if there is any) cryptographic 'tools' that are solid enough for a few years at least. But who knows the computing power those guys have? I'm afraid nobody can guess...
Actually I do believe there is a method that is entirely unbreakable if done properly: http://salted7fpnlaguiq.onion/wiki/index.php/One_Time_Pad
Hardly easy to use but mathematically secure for now and evermore!
Its more of a guess for current schemes as the rate of progress of quantum computers but I'm sure I read something from kmfkewm that suggested that symmetric encryption was going to be much more resistant to quantum computers (or at least to Grover's algorithm which can halve the key-space - much less serious state of affairs for reasons that escape me until I go and find that post).
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any thing you add or change to torbrowser makes you stand out.
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- Within what time frame do you think that AES, twofish, DES and the other mainstream cyphers will fall to quantum computing ?
AES, twofish and DES are symmetric algorithms and are only vulnerable to having their key spaces halved. That means that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break AES-128 and Twofish-128 but not AES-256 or Twofish-256. DES is already breakable by classical computers as it only has a 56 bit key space. DES was replaced with Triple DES, but even that is already nearly breakable by classical computers, it might even already be. Triple DES was replaced by AES.
As far as RSA and ECC go, I don't know. I am not an expert on the current state of quantum computers. I know when I first got into cryptography (as a hobbyist, not a professional, as I am not a cryptographer), the cryptographers seemed to think that RSA-2,048 would never be broken. Today many cryptographers are designing new asymmetric algorithms because they think multi-prime-RSA with less than 2^32 4,096 bit primes could potentially be broken in the near-distant-future. It entirely depends on the speed with which it takes for true quantum computers with large numbers of stabilized qubits to be realized. Some people seem to expect an exponential increase in stabilized qubits over the next few years, others seem to think this will not happen, and others still say that nobody knows what unforeseen issues the researchers/developers will run into, so nobody can say for sure. I will say that these days cryptographers have less faith in the long term viability of RSA and ECC than they did just a handful of years ago.
- Do you believe that alternative quantum proof encryption solutions will be widely available before AES, two-fish, DES and the other mainstream cyphers fall to quantum computing or will there likely be a period of non protection where SR, onion routing, SSL and the like will no longer be able to be secured ?
I am replacing AES etc with RSA and ECC every time, because you seem to have confused the algorithms that are particularly weak to quantum computing attacks. The answer is yes. There are already implementations of asymmetric algorithms that are not weak to any known quantum based attacks. If there is a period of time when people currently using RSA and ECC are vulnerable to quantum computing based attacks, it will be because the people making standards like TLS and OpenPGP, and people making software like Tor and GPG, are not quick enough to integrate the post quantum algorithms prior to the realization of powerful quantum computers.
- Do you see the vendors of truecrypt for example being able to integrate any new quantum-proof cyphers into their product in a seamless fashion ?
Truecrypt uses symmetric algorithms and is already quantum resistant. I don't know if the people developing standards and software will switch to quantum resistant algorithms prior to the creation of powerful quantum computers. I don't think they would have a terribly hard time to do so though.
- Is upping the key length enough to defeat quantum computing I.E going form 1024 bits to 4096 or higher because I seem to recall reading it was ?
To the best of my understanding upping the key space of an asymmetric algorithm does make it more resistant to quantum computers, in that the quantum computer must possess more stabilized qubits in order to successfully attack it. After all, Shors algorithm has already been run successfully on quantum computers, and has factored two digit numbers into primes, but that is a long way away from breaking RSA. However, some people expect a rapid increase in the number of stabilized qubits. However, a quantum computer with enough stabilized qubits to attack RSA-4,096 would be capable of almost instantaneously decrypting anything that is encrypted with RSA-4,096. There is a paper by the cryptographer D.J. Bernstein where he estimates that quantum resistant RSA will have keys that require multiple hard drives to hold:
cr.yp.to/talks/2010.05.28/slides.pdf
Concrete analysis suggests that
RSA with 2^31 4096-bit primes
provides > 2^100 security
vs. all known quantum attacks.
Key almost fits on a hard drive.
He is discussing multi-prime-RSA though, not the effect of increasing bit strength of traditional RSA. However, he seems to start from the position that traditional RSA is screwed in a post quantum world, and is jokingly suggesting multi-prime-RSA as an overlooked quantum resistant algorithm.
- Asymmetric encryption is immune to quantum computing right ?
Almost all of the current widely used asymmetric algorithms are extremely vulnerable to quantum computing based attacks. Symmetric algorithms hold up much better, with the best quantum attack against them only halving their key space.
edit: clarified by changing 'RSA-8.796093022×10¹² could potentially be broken' to 'RSA with less than 2^32 4,096 bit primes could potentially be broken', as it is in reference to the number of total bits making up all of the primes in multi-prime-RSA, rather than the size of single primes in traditional RSA.
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Good explanation KMF. +1
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Good explanation KMF. +1
Thanks, I updated the original post slightly to clarify a few things. It is also best to keep in mind that I am far from an expert on quantum computing and am not even a cryptographer, so this explanation is to the best of my understanding (although the only part I am uncertain about is related to Shors algorithm and how much increasing bit strength of traditional RSA hinders it. I am essentially positive that it hinders it somewhat, but from D.J.B's pdf it seems like it doesn't hinder it enough to make it realistically quantum resistant, and that multi-prime-RSA with a massive number of 4,096 bit primes is required, but that is just what I have deduced from his paper + the fact that Shors Algorithm has already been run on quantum computers to factor small numbers).
If I had to take a semi-educated guess, it would be that the number of stabilized qubits required grows linearly with the bit size of the primes in traditional RSA, but that it is expected that it will be computationally infeasible to use RSA with more bits than there are stabilized qubits after the number of stabilized qubits continues to exponentially grow for some number of years into the future. Multi-prime-RSA may still be feasible for quantum resistance if enough primes are used, however rather than being completely computationally infeasible it is simply impractical (requiring multiple hard drives to hold the key).
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In the end, will they use these machines to watch us?? No, they want stuff that'll make them money (for google that means social and marketing trends, for lockheed martin it'll be used towards "national security and defense").
tl;dr not actually quantum computers doing tasks unrelated to roaders
In the end? It sounds more like, "In the meantime". You don't see, at least, the possibility of an evil end to all of this? The monitoring of all financial, social, interpersonal telecommunications data, being used by those who already run the world, to find the people who hide their money, ie; off shore accounts, what activities they may be up to in their personal lives, that the evil cabal of 30 or so families who currently run everything, might find threatening to their little 'ultimate country club'? So they can finally squeeze those dollars out of them, that they knew existed, but just could never "break the code" as it were.
That's just one plausible scenario in my, admittedly, small mind. I know I don't have as healthy a lump of grey matter between my ears as most of you in this thread, who talk of quantum computers. A term that just the mere thought of asking someone to explain it to me, gives me a headache. I really don't want to know. Though I'm glad you guys are around to watchdog this "mad science'.
You're all so very intelligent, and well versed on these issues. (Well if not, you have me fooled anyway ::))
One of my fathers "meaningless" sayings was, "The schools always said you were smart, yeah, too smart for your own good!" - Usually we were in something called "Arraignment Part B" when he'd say those words.
A lot of wisdom, in that meaningless statement.
I don't have long for this world, so I'm not that worried about the mining and 'Big Brother' government inevitability. I just wish I hadn't had kids.
Back when they were born, there was a lot more hope in this place. I shudder to think of what they'll be contending with when and if they make it to my age.
I suppose, I'm not the first father to think that way, nor will I be the last.
Thanks for helping me work all of this out in my mind. Now I can go to sleep
Keep up the good work! :-\
-Chipster 8)
PS. See if you guys can wrap this shit up by next Wednesday! Big Holiday weekend coming up, and who needs all this worry on their minds? ;)
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I thought this was an interesting to twist to the discussion here: *CLEARNET* http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/06/use-of-tor-and-e-mail-crypto-could-increase-chances-that-nsa-keeps-your-data/